As you can see we’re in beautiful Vail, Colorado check out that scenery back there pretty fantastic. Today we’re talking about something that I learned when I was really little trying to learn how to snowboard. I have an amazing father who believes the best way to break though fear is to feel the fear and do it anyways.

And so when I was little kid I’ll tell you a quick story to set this off. When I was little kid I remember going up to the top of the mountain with my dad cause his philosophy was the best way to teach your child how to turn on a snowboard is to take them to the steepest part of the mountain because you have to turn otherwise you roll down the hill.

Let’s just say I rolled down the hill a few times because I was afraid of turning and when that fear ended up my body at that moment of my life I was not good at what I’m about to teach you. At that moment of my life I cried, I gave up, and dad and I ended up at some pretty bad shouting matches at top of the mountain about; “I’m gonna go down the hill.” “No, I’m not.”

So, it’s an interesting memories here on the slopes but it also taught me something that later in life. Now I’ve learn to be used as an incredible asset. It’s something I wanna share with you. The concept when fear takes over in your body we can measure this nowadays and the best way to measure if you are in a fearful place is based on your breathing pattern.

I’ll tell you number one breath pattern that tells you that are in fearful state,

You’re not breathing. If you catch yourself holding your breath and thinking about everything that might go right or wrong in the next 10 minutes in your freaking about it, you’re in a fearful state. You’re body’s going in a fight or flight.

Really rapidly breathing, you’re like (panting) if you’re freaking out like that you’re having a panic attack and it feels like that on your breath obviously that’s putting you into a fearful state or an erratic state which is not gonna help you focus or feel strong or confident in that moment. You know there a few other patterns but those two are the main ones, if you’re holding your breath or if your breath pattern is out of control.

Now, when that happens, you’re body’s going to fight or flight or a light level of shock and as that’s happening there are few things that are going on into your physical body. Your muscles tighten; your body starts to break down fuel faster so you have energy, that you can propel yourself to either fight like heck or run like heck, it’s fight or flight.

For men, we lose our peripheral vision, meaning we start to have tunnel vision and everything out here disappears so that we can laser focus on what we either you attack or run from. Now the other thing that happens is our eyes really focus, they get really it’s not that it, but they start to focus really strongly so we can clearly see where we need to go or where we need to run from.

And so it is wild on this concept is we lose our ability to use our executive functioning part of our brain which is the logical, decision-making part of our brain. So, here’s what I’m gonna tell you to do, whenever you get in to a fearful state, I wish someone would have taught me this crying and sitting on my butt on top of the mountain back in the days, but I gotta tell you now so you can save yourself from the pain, the frustration, and those moments I’ve been through.

Whenever you feel yourself getting in to fearful state your breath patterns becomes erratic and then you start holding your breath and get really intense, all of a sudden you seem to not being able to think clearly and you’re kinda lost, your scattered in those moments is a signal that the very first thing you need to do is STOP.

STOP! Take a step back and literally assess the situation and by assessing the situation what you wanna do is you wanna train your brain to ask three questions:

Is this a normal problem?

Is this an abnormal problem?

Is this literally a life-threatening problem right now.

Now the reason why you wanna ask those three questions is because why on the world would you freak out on a normal problem? If it’s normal. If it’s meant to happen there’s no reason to freak out there’s no reason to have fear, there’s no reason to be upset. You know when I was a little kid I would have known this, I was like “hey falling down when trying to learn how to snow board is a normal problem.” Why would I freak out?

You know, if it’s abnormal meaning you’ve been snowboarding for 15 years and you still can’t figure out how to turn, that is an abnormal problem. And if you’re trying to use that technique while back country snowboarding that is a life threatening problem. So I don’t have a life-threatening problem we were a normal blues greens and black runs so that was not life threatening.

Number two, was it abnormal? No it was perfectly normal so there’s absolutely zero reason to freak out in that case if it’s a normal problem the next step is to reset your nervous system because when you’re in fight or flight you cannot logically think well enough to actually get through the challenge.

So what do you have to do? Number one, you have to take 3 deep breaths that reset your nervous system, your central nervous system here, how you do that is really simple, do this with me… you’re gonna take a deep breath (inhale) and at the very top when you feel completely full you’re gonna do a little more (inhale) and then you’re gonna hold it for 3 seconds.

So ready.. breathe in (inhale) one more (inhale) hold it (counting with fingers 1,2,3)and then all at once out into your mouth. And if you notice if you let it out you wanna drop your shoulders, drop your head and let out all the air at once. So let’s try it 3 in a row, real quick…

Ready, breath in (counting with fingers 1,2,3) a little bit more hold it (counting with fingers 1,2,3) all the way out… that’s one

One more time, (inhale counting with fingers 1,2,3) a little bit more hold it (counting with fingers 1,2,3) all the way out… that’s one

One more time, (inhale counting with fingers 1,2,3) a little bit more hold it (counting with fingers 1,2,3) all the way out… that’s one

Now it happens when you that if you’ve noticed a friend of mine who studied the breath work for three years taught me that he said it literally reset like pressing that reset button on an electronic device it resets your nervous system and allows you to get out of fight or flight and back to actual logical thinking that’s what we wanna get back to.

Now that you’re in actual logical thought process you then wanna say “Okay, let me put together the next three moves in order to make progress, just as simple as that.”

So number one, step back and asses.. is this life normal, abnormal of life threatening? If it’s normal no problem three deep breaths reset your nervous system and then say “Okay, what are the next three steps that have to happen now?” and then once you’ve figure out with the three things all you need to do immediately take action on number one and that simple little philosophy right there will help you take fear and instead of letting it push you and pull you around and leave you frozen in your tracks freaking out or crying like a little wuss on top of the mountain like I was that time of my life.

Instead, you can reset, re-calibrate organize your steps, lock on, take action and kick some butt.

Have fun with this, use it and please pay it forward to other people who you know get stuck in a fearful state coz this is a real freedom you can give them and yourself by using this process.

Also make sure to download today’s worksheet because it has the little formula typed up and a couple of questions that will help you identify normal, abnormal or life-threatening as well as what are the next three steps?

You’re gonna have your form as a way to apply and get through it. It also serves as a good back up option in case your brain gets hijacked when you’re in fight or flight and you can’t logically think through it, use the form… just follow the steps and boom it’ll get you right through it every time.

Download today’s worksheet, have fun with it and I’ll see you next week for another episode of JRCTV.